Hot Topics:

Editorials from around the country

Posted:
10/29/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

CEOs to D.C.: Get serious

Chief executives of more than 85 major U.S. corporations jumped into the debate over the federal budget mess Thursday, calling on Washington to put its fiscal house in order by raising tax revenue, cutting spending, controlling the growing cost of healthcare entitlements and assuring the sustainability of Social Security. They endorsed a set of principles, not specific policy proposals, and they tiptoed around the question of how to take the steps they've recommended without damaging the fragile economy. But the path they charted is the same one that a growing number of bipartisan groups have been advocating for more than two years. Although the details won't be easy to agree on, the framework of a grand compromise should by now be obvious to lawmakers.

In fact, it should have been obvious long ago. Seemingly every group not wedded to a particular ideology that has looked at the federal government's long-term deficit and debt problems has come to the same set of conclusions. First, the government's current trajectory is unsustainable. Second, the most significant threat over the long term is rising healthcare costs in Medicare and Medicaid. And third, Washington's budget gap is too wide to be closed just by slashing spending.

Still, simply having a plan that lays out future changes in taxes and spending would help dispel the uncertainty over federal policy that is hampering economic growth.

Los Angeles Times

Race comes down to a matter of trust

Advertisement

Mitt Romney has taken flip-flopping to new extremes. It's not merely that he's moved toward the political center for the general election, or that he's equivocating on a few controversial issues.

It goes to the core of his presidential campaign -- and to trust and character. How can Americans ever believe what he says?

Romney's jaw-dropping willingness to so blithely change his positions for political expediency should also worry voters about how effective he would be in the White House. How could he successfully negotiate with leaders in Congress or around the globe if they can't take him at his word?

President Barack Obama is rightly trying to focus on this issue in the campaign's final days. On the stump, he's taken to needling his opponent about "Romnesia" -- that he can't remember stands he took four days ago, much less four years ago.

The question of who the real Romney is has dogged his candidacy from the start. GOP rival Jon Huntsman once called him "a perfectly lubricated weather vane."

Maybe you can get away with that as a candidate. You can't as president.

The Sacramento Bee

In Texas, a sis boom bad ruling

At some point, the cheerleading squad at Kountze High School in Texas began inscribing the banners at football games with Bible verses such as "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me!" To the cheerleaders' way of thinking, the banners are a way of exercising their freedom of speech, and a judge has at least tentatively -- and wrongly -- agreed.

The school superintendent in Kountze had told the cheerleaders to drop the religious messages, but Hardin County District Judge Steve Thomas said last week that the superintendent's order appeared to violate a 2007 Texas law that requires schools to treat a student's religious expression the same as any other viewpoint. He issued a temporary injunction against the school district until the case goes to trial.

Certainly, students are entitled to express their personal viewpoints, religious or not, in many school-related settings. They can exchange religious views with other students in the cafeteria or form Christian clubs and pray with one another. Individual students can speak up in class on the subject at hand and give opinions that are informed by their faith. But a cheerleading squad is a school-sponsored organization that is supposed to be equally welcoming to all students of all beliefs; the cheerleaders wear school uniforms and perform at official school functions representing their school.

The very point of freedom from government establishment of religion is that the majority -- even a really big majority -- does not get to set the religious agenda for others in a government-sponsored setting.

Boulder is pretty good at producing rock bands, and by "rock," we mean the in-your-face, guitar-heavy, leather-clad variety — you know, the good kind. For a prime example, look no farther than BANDITS. Full Story